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After the “I DO” !!

Someone once said to me – “a marriage lasts for as long as the two people remain in love… if love dies then the marriage dies”.

hmmmm…. But if two people are married, aren’t they in love? How would they fall out of love if they loved enough to get married? Does that mean they did not love even before getting married?

So many questions came to mind hearing that statement from this person and naturally sent me on a long and hard thought journey.

Have you ever looked at your spouse of many years and wonder how it is you feel the same way about them that you felt when you first realized you were in love??? And try to understand “how can I love this one person so much for so long?”

I have come to realize that this statement can in fact ring true. When you no longer feel love for your spouse the marriage is pretty much over. But what causes a spouse to fall out of love?

I believe that people fall out of love because they do not love unconditionally. So one may love someone for their looks or their money or whatever….. Once a condition has been put to the reason why you love the person then it can easily fade away. These qualities are what you like about the person but what makes you love them is beyond those qualities. It is accepting who they are with all the faults, failings and disappointments they may bring.

I honestly can’t tell you why I love my husband.. He pisses me off at times and he drives me up a wall, hahaha, yet even on days when I say I am just done with this marriage, I still stay. And on days when I try to convince myself that I no longer love him, my heart beats and says “shut up brain, you know that’s not true” hahaha… Because I love him beyond conditions and I love him more with every day and fall in love with him every day. 😊

Unconditional love allows you to fall in love with that person every single day and that is what keeps a marriage. But that love has to come from both partners. Where one partner fails to demonstrate that love then the marriage is strained and that is one of the things that may break up a marriage – the selfishness of one partner.

Marriage does not mean that we stop working towards the relationship that we have with each other and it does not mean that we become complacent. After the “I do”, often times spouses feel that “I got the person so no need to keep working hard to get that person” – Wrong!!!… This is when the work begins… Marriage takes work and does not work out on its own. The efforts we put in is what we will get out. And the little things matter so much more than we can imagine. I remember a line from the movie Fireproof that stated …

When a man is trying to win the heart of a woman, he studies her. He learns her likes, dislikes, habits and hobbies. But after he wins her heart and marries her he often stops learning about her. If the amount he studies her before marriage, was equal to a high-school degree. He should continue to learn about her, until he gains a college degree, a masters degree, and ultimately a doctorate degree. It is a lifelong journey that draws his heart ever closer to hers.

Ofcourse, I think this applies to the woman in the relationship as well. Each party should constantly seek to learn about their partner. Neither party is superior nor inferior to the other – as husband and wife you walk side by side in union with God at the center.

So why not go on a date? Why not take the children to the grandparents or sitter and just have a night for the two of you? Why not study each other the way you did before the “I Do”?

I don’t pretend to be an expert on love, neither an expert on marriage. But don’t we all know what we want from a relationship? It is knowing what we want we are able to recognize when we have it and be able to grow to it becoming worthwhile for both partners.

So after the “I Do” is not when the relationahip ends but when it begins.